To complete the trilogy started with “Sympathy Mr Vengeance” and “Oldboy”, I once more dived into the realms of Korean anger… and again it is the anger of a woman, what does that tell us about the Korean mindset… You can understand she is not a happy girl: not only jailed for a crime she did not commit, but in jail also confronted with a bunch of less pleasant characters (a nasty huge lady that seeks, let’s say, to steal pleasure).

I admit that due to lack of concentration at the beginning, I was terribly confused. The narration jumps and bounces, back to prison, and back to now, the time after she is released. Had I not checked the linear plot narration provided at Wikipedia, I would probably have completely missed the reason why her daughter is where she is, and how that relates to the crime she committed. While it is clear where the story is heading (an extended finale of revenge activity, let’s say), it is not clear that it will be a group exercise, and that allows for nice and funny revenge cinema. I do, however, believe, that director Park Chan-wook was a bit too keen to show his cinematic craftsmanship, and created some story loops that the film could have done without. His strengths are when paintings need to be put on canvas. He finds amazing pictures for dreams about revenge (dog with man head), group action (the army of avengers clad in protective plastic uniforms), and he has the sense of humour to get you through his twisted revenge fantasy: when the revenge deed is done, of course the group photo is the most natural thing to do.

I do think it is the third-best movie of the trilogy, certainly very strong and distinguished in terms of images, but no match to the intensity of Old Boy in particular.